Analyzing the presentation of ideas

0:00- [David] Hey there, readers. I'm going to present you with an argument out of sequence to demonstrate why the ordering of ideas is so important. With chopsticks, I can eat my favorite snacks without feeling like a total goblin. That cheese powder really gets into the pads of your fingers, leaving nasty orange fingerprints on everything you touch.

0:21My fingers remain clean, and so does my phone. I don't eat cheesy corn puff snacks very often, but twice a year or so, I really crave orange powdered cheese. What did I just read? What's the through line? There is none. It's garbled, it's jumbled. Now's the part where I reveal to you that I took a paragraph that I wrote, I chopped it up and then shuffled the sentences, like playing cards.

0:45I've color coded each section to keep them distinct, but those sections are out of order. Argue amongst yourselves. What order do these sections go in? What order best develops the idea? What makes this make the most sense, or makes it the most persuasive? I'll put on some music to give you some time to pause the video.

1:05Here we go, 10 seconds. See you back whenever you're ready. (rhythmic chiming music) And we're back. Let's reorder this argument, so that my main idea develops in a clear and logical way. Let's break down this argument and what each section accomplishes, and why it's useful to see it all in order.

1:36So, first I introduce the background. Here's some context I'm setting up. So that's, I like corn puffs here. Then I present a problem, the cheese powder gets everywhere. What's my evidence that it's a problem? Nasty orange fingerprints on the phone, on the dog.

1:51Then I come up with a solution. Chopsticks prevent me from feeling like a goblin when I eat. Then I show how well that solution works. Clean fingers, clean phone. With the sentences in this order, you can clearly see how I'm developing my main idea that chopsticks are a great tool for eating cheesy, corn puffs because they keep your fingers clean.

2:12So, sure, this is condensed, right? I'm doing this analysis over the course of a paragraph. When you also want to be able to trace how ideas develop over the course of an entire essay, or even entire book, but the skill is the same. Understanding how authors develop their ideas can help you become a stronger reader and a stronger writer yourself.

2:31Okay, why is that? In the stronger reader side of things, you can trace how an author develops ideas in order to better understand the author's purpose, and evaluate whether or not their claims or evidence hold any water, whether or not they're convincing claims or evidence.

2:46On the stronger writer side of things, you can apply those same techniques to your own claims. Are they clear? Do they make sense? Can a reader trace the path from cheesy puffs to chopsticks and understand why that claim is persuasive? Useful stuff. And that's true whether or not you're writing about powdered cheese.

3:05Oh, of course now I have to find something to eat, but it's not one of those two times per year when I really want cheesy corn puffs. So I'll probably have, I don't know, an apple or whatever. Ooh, maybe frozen blueberries. You know, frozen blueberries really punch above their weight as a snack, influencing the kids, wellness influencer, David.

3:22All right, you can learn anything, David out. Have a have a fruit.